former of these go among us by the general name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans or Turkmans.... At the very date at which Heraclius called the Turcomans into Georgia, at 20 the very date when their Eastern brethren crossed the northern border of Sogdiana, an event of most momentous import had occurred in the South. A new religion had arisen in Arabia. The impostor Mahomet, announcing himself the 25 Prophet of God, was writing the pages of that book, and molding the faith of that people, which was to subdue half the known world. The Turks passed the Jaxartes southward in A.D. 626; just four years before Mahomet had assumed the royal dignity, and just six years after, on his death, his followers began the conquest of the Persian Empire. In the course of 20 years they effected it; Sogdiana was at its very extremity, or its 5 borderland; there the last king of Persia took refuge from the south, while the Turks were pouring into it from the north. There was little to choose for the unfortunate prince between the Turk and the Saracen; the Turks were his 10 hereditary foe; they had been the giants and monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw himself into their arms. They engaged in his service, betrayed him, murdered him, and measured themselves with the Saracens in his stead. 15 Thus the military strength of the north and south of Asia, the Saracenic and the Turkish, came into memorable conflict in the regions of which I have said so much. The struggle was a fierce one, and lasted many years; the Turks striving to force 20 their way down to the ocean, the Saracens to drive them back into their Scythian deserts. They first fought this issue in Bactriana or Khorasan; the Turks got the worst of the fight, and then it was thrown back upon Sogdiana 25 itself, and there it ended again in favor of the Saracens. At the end of 90 years from the time of the first Turkish descent on this fair region, they relinquished it to their Mahometan opponents. The conquerors found it rich, populous, 30 and powerful; its cities, Carisme, Bokhara, and Samarcand, were surrounded beyond their fortifications by a suburb of fields and gardens, which was in turn protected by exterior works; its plains were well cultivated, and its commerce extended from China to Europe. Its riches were 5 proportionally great; the Saracens were able to extort a tribute of two million gold pieces from the inhabitants; we read, moreover, of the crown jewels of one of the Turkish princesses; and of the buskin of another, which she dropt in her 10 flight from Bokhara, as being worth two thousand pieces of gold.[34] Such had been the prosperity